Product Description

The eagerly awaited second book of the critically acclaimed trilogy!

Orphan Rossamünd Bookchild has been sworn into the Emperor’s service—his duty is to light the lamps along the Emperor’s highways and protect travelers from the ferocious bogles that live in the wild. But he’s found it no easier to fit in with the lamplighters than he did with the foundlings—always too small and too meek—and his loneliness continues no matter how hard he tries to succeed.

But when a haughty young girl, a member of a suspiciously regarded society of all-women teratologists— monster hunters—is forced upon the lamplighters for training, Rossamünd is no longer the most despised soul around. As Rossamünd begins to make new friends in the dangerous world of the Half-Continent, he also seems to make more enemies, finding himself pushed toward a destiny that he could never have imagined.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #151257 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 476 pages

School Library Journal
Devout fantasy fans will welcome the return to the socially and morally complex world of the Half-Continent and eagerly anticipate the concluding installment.

About the Author
D. M. Cornish began the work for Monster Blood Tattoo in 1993 while an art student. He filled nearly two dozen notebooks with sketches and notes before he began writing. The author lives in Adelaide, Australia.

Customer Reviews

Another good book
D.M. Cornish has created a really interesting world for his Monster Blood Tattoo series. It is familiar yet really different from ours with it s monsters and vinegar seas. The action is very well written and in the long periods of inaction keep up a good pace in the story. The mystery of the book is not hard to figure out, though it is not really the focus of the book. The characters are just fascinating and all are fascinating for different reasons. I was disappointed that Fouracres was not in this installment, but I have hope that we will see him again. No small part of the fun is the very excellent illustrations depicting many of the important characters.

Too Long to Hold My Interest
The Monster Blood Tattoo series continues with this next installment. Lamplighter is twice as thick as its preceding story, Foundling, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is twice as good.

For those of you who haven't read the first in the series, main character Rossamünd is a foundling who embarks on an adventure to reach a city called High Vesting in order to begin training as a lamplighter. On this journey, he encounters a wide cast of characters including leers, massacars, lahzars, and even monsters.

The second book continues immediately after the first left off. Rossamünd makes it to High Vesting in the nick of time to begin his training. The first time he goes out to practice his lamplighting with the other prentices, they are set upon by a large monster, a horn-ed nicker to be specific, and two others. With the aid of a group of calendars, they manage to destroy the monsters. However, with that, they also learn that there is to be a female prentice named Threnody.

Rossamünd and Threnody become unexpected allies as they train and work together. Many characters from the first book come back into play, such as Europe the lahzar, Master Sebastipole, Master Fransitart, Master Craumpalin, and Freckles the glamgorn bogle. New characters include Mister Numps, and numerous others employed as lamplighters or related services. I found that it was very hard to keep track of all the different names.

I found Lamplighter harder to read than Foundling for several reasons, but mostly because of sheer size. The second story was about twice the size of the first. The wording was strange at times, the descriptions repetitive or drawn out and boring. The new terms used made the story hard to understand, especially where the new monetary system and months were concerned. There were a lot of subplots within the story that were hard to keep track of, and unlike the first book, there wasn't a clear goal of the story. It merely followed Rossamünd's journeys, but I couldn't really find a point to those journeys. I also felt that this story was a bit too much like Lord of the Rings, Narnia, and Eragon, although fans of those stories would probably like this one.

What also bothered me was that Rossamünd was also called clever, but to me, he never seemed to be. I figured out many unsolved problems of his before he did. Rossamünd also seemed to contradict himself a lot and could never seem to make up his mind unless it was done for him. His relationship with Threnody was awkward at best and very repetitive. Reading this second book almost discouraged me from wanting to read the rest of the story when it comes out.

However, I did like the ending of the story. The last hundred pages or so redeem the story's other faults. If the books are named after Rossamünd's occupations during them, then there is good reason to believe the third book will be called Factotum. Despite the length of this book, I am looking forward to the next installment in the series, and I hope the sheer size of this book will not daunt others from reading it.

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Story moved very slowly
Reviewed by Maya Landers (age 10) for Reader Views (5/08)

"Lamplighter," book two in the Monster Blood Tattoo series, by D.M. Cornish, was not one of my favorite books because at some points the story moved very slowly, while at other points it moved along so quickly that the reader had trouble keeping up with it. The story begins when the main character, Rossamund, is on an excursion with all the other prentice lantern-lighters to light and douse the lamps along the road that went from Winstermill to Wellnigh house. He never wanted to be a lantern-lighter and had done so only to escape Madame Opera's Estimable Marine Society for Foundling Boys and Girls. At first, this excursion proves to just as boring as his last one, until the clatter of horses' hooves are heard down the road. As the carriage is sighted, one of the other prentices realizes that the horses have no coachman. The horses are running out of sheer terror. Behind the carriage comes a monstrous being with gigantic horns and wicked slits for eyes.

So begins the book with one of the more fast-paced sections. The action begins quickly, on page seven. I thought that this didn't give the reader enough time to comprehend what was going on. Alternately, later on in the book, the pace is much slower, with so little action that the reader soon forgets what he or she has just learned. This is book two in the "Monster Blood Tattoo" series so that may explain why some things didn't make sense to me. I could understand most things well, but there were some unexplained things that I assumed were clarified in the first book. However, I could mostly understand what was going on, and I was able to grasp a basic idea of the characters and plot.

At the beginning of each chapter, there was a "dictionary" definition of a different character, object, or action that was used or preformed in that chapter. I found this very useful, and the definitions were also very interesting.

I would not recommend "Lamplighter" to my friends because I did not think that it did a very good job making an equal balance between the parts of the book that were filled with action and the more slow-paced sections.